Gamasutra Versus Capcom: The Tatsunoko Interview

Capcom's Versus series once delivered some of the most memorable,
appealing, and addictive games in the fighting genre -- hitting creative and
playability highs that other developers couldn't reach.

But by 2004, that
creative spark -- which gave us games as robust as Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Capcom
vs. SNK 2 was snuffed out. Capcom failed to bring its first triple-A
attempt at 2D/3D crossover, Capcom
Fighting All-Stars, to market, instead delivering the half-baked Capcom Fighting Evolution -- a game that
suggested the developer had run out of juice. The 2D fighting genre went
dormant.

Somehow, though, Capcom has rescued it from dormancy with the massive
success of Street Fighter IV. Arc
System Works delivered the high definition BlazBlue.
And Capcom has chosen to revitalize its Versus
series in the form of Tatsunoko vs.
Capcom.

The title, which debuted in Japan late last year and in the West in January 2010, pits the retro cool of the anime studio -- best known in the
west for Battle of the Planets/G-Force -- against Capcom's slate of memorable characters
-- up to and including Frank West from Dead
Rising.

How did something like this happen? How do you even make a game like this
in this day and age? And why go exclusively for the Wii? To answer those questions,
Gamasutra sat down with the game's producer Ryota Niitsuma.

My first question
is: why Tatsunoko?

Ryota Niitsuma: Well, the first stage of
involvement is that Tatsunoko approached us about making a game using their
characters. Fortunately, at that time, I was looking to make a new fighting
game.

Of course, at Capcom, we have the Street Fighter-type series and then the Versus series, which are kind of different types of fighting games.
So, we thought, "Oh, maybe this Tatsunoko would fit well in the Versus series." And "Since I
want to make a fighting game and they want a Tatsunoko game, this might be the
way to go."

The fighting genre
has gotten a real boost recently. Why do you think the fighting genre has
suddenly gotten popular? It kind of died down for several years, but it's come
way back up.

RN: For a while, the fighting game
fans, I think they were looking for something new to play, and there wasn't anything
out there for them. But the developers, even us, we knew that they would want
something.

So we just felt maybe it was time to put something out for them and
see what happens. And I think other developers as well felt the same thing. I
think we just had the confluence of all these things coming together. It seems
like it's going through a revival, if you will.

Absolutely.

RN: And after, with the home
systems, we have the online play through a network. That's really come a long
way from back in the day. So, because now you have that -- fighting games are
all about fighting different opponents -- now you can fight people all around
the world in far off places. Now that the networks and the internet are in
place to deal with that, I think that's another key point to the revival.

Beyond network
play, is there anything that a fighting game has to have now to capture an
audience, that's different from in the past? How do you get that interest back
that there always has been, but died down for a while?

RN: I guess when you're talking
about fighting games, the two key words are "balance" and "graphics".
When you're talking about graphics, when you compare them to any other type of
genre of game, there are not as many graphical elements as a regular game.

You have
basically characters, backgrounds, and then power gauges and what not. Life
gauges. So, those three elements, if you nail those just right, then you've got
the graphics part. Then after that, it's making a balanced fighter that people
will enjoy playing.